Second Chance
by Gwen Cooper Williams
Summary: Owen post 2x06 - Reset. His thoughts, actions, and coming to terms with it. And yes, Owen has a dirty mind. Spans several years past Reset. I don't really give much of a timeline, but probably 5-10 years. Gwen/Owen, Owen/Tosh, The Doctor shows up, too.


The novelty of being the waking dead wore off pretty fast. Shocking people by telling them he's dead started to loose it's shine after a while. And darn if it wasn't fair. Seriously. Back from the dead, and he can't even ask a bird for a last shag for a dying man...or even a kiss because there was nothing there. No feelings. A kiss didn't feel like anything to him the way it ought to. And no blood flow...well, that puts a damper on shagging, doesn't it?

Owen really tried to make the best of things, but it was rough. Martha had no idea how long Owen would "survive". No one else knew how to really act around him anymore since they didn't know how quickly he might drop dead for real. Everyone treated him with kid gloves, like he was made out of porcelain. They even were afraid to disagree with him or fight with him. He didn't really understand it.

Gwen and Tosh had moved into his flat because it was larger than Tosh's flat they had been sharing, and they wanted to keep an eye on Owen. HA! He barely was ever actually at his flat...why should he? He can't eat, sleep, or shit and that's really the only reasons for having a flat other than shagging, wasn't it? He supposed he could watch telly, but when everything was bloody re-runs and you didn't know how long you'd be around, he figured he'd lay off the telly for a while.

Gwen still slept in his bed, but he didn't know why. Sometimes, after a particularly trying case, Tosh would climb in on the other side of the bed, and they'd ask him to lay with them. He'd always be in the middle with a girl on either side...every man's dream, right? Gwen would curl into him like she always had when they slept together and if he had a sense of smell, he knew he'd be able to smell the lavender shampoo she still used. Tosh's shirt would ride up sometimes, revealing her smooth stomach. What he wouldn't give to be able to actually _feel_ instead of just look.

Martha kept suggesting to Jack that they call their "right kind of doctor" to see if he could fix him. As if he was broken. Though, he supposed in a way he was broken. A bloke just wasn't expected to walk off the autopsy table and live with a gaping hole in their chest, now were they?

Jack always made excuses for not calling this doctor friend of theirs. Said the Doctor might make it so Owen was dead for real, and he didn't want him gone. Martha would point out that the Doctor could also make it so Owen was alive again, the way Jack was, but Jack never agreed. They had this argument every few weeks, whenever Martha came down from London to look over Owen to make sure he wasn't decaying and to assist him with anything he couldn't do what with not being alive and all.

Owen thinks Ianto is jealous of him. Someday, Ianto might die, and since they destroyed the glove there would be no way for Jack to bring him back. And then that would leave Owen and Jack together forever. The never-can-die, and the always-is-dying. What a pair the two of them make.

They had tried a heart transplant once, thinking they could make him alive again. It didn't work. All it did was leave him gasping for breath on the table and he felt pain for the brief time the heart was working...but oh, how joyous it was to even feel pain. The heart only lasted for a few hours, but oh, the things Owen did in those few hours. He touched things, he smelled. He kissed Gwen, Tosh, Martha, and even Jack. But the heart didn't last, and soon he was back to being undead. They're bleedin' Torchwood, they have all this future technology hanging around them, and yet they can't figure out how to make him stay alive.

They even tried giving him a transfusion of Jack's blood, thinking the blood of a never-can-die man might increase Owen's chances of being alive again. Martha had had to drain the blood right back out of Owen. Without a properly working heart to pump the blood, it just swished around in there, doing nothing.

Of course, the hole in his chest had been taken care of. Well, not taken care of, so much as he now had a nice piece of fake skin covering it that could be removed to check on the hole. At least now he wouldn't scare people if he walked around shirtless. Of course, the only people he ever wanted to be around already knew about the hole in his chest.

Owen hadn't bothered to have Jack contact his mother. There was nothing to say to her, really. Owen wasn't dead, and he wasn't alive. What would she care? Besides he barely had spoken with his mum after he turned sixteen.

The nice thing about being dead was he didn't need to buy anything to sustain himself. Occasionally he would purchase new clothing as things got worn out or damaged, and he still paid for the flat the three of them lived in, but the rest of his money was all in the bank just collecting interest. He finally got up the nerve and saw a barrister one day and drew up papers to ensure that if he finally did die for real, Gwen and Tosh would be taken care of. He wasn't really sure what the three of them were to each other. They were more than flatmates, since they slept, really and actually slept, together...but neither one of them was dating him, as far as he knew, and he was pretty sure the girls weren't dating each other. At least, he never got to see them snogging or shagging, no matter how many times he asked them to.

He spent more and more time in his Autopsy lab, and less time out on the field. They desperately needed another field agent, but Jack always refused. Ianto was used for missions more and more, and finally Jack had been convinced to hire someone new to man the tourist office and serve as "office assistant". The new hires never seemed to stay long once they learned Owen was undead. They went through entirely too much retcon that first month, so Ianto finally turned in his gun and went back to his prior job. Owen and Ianto rotated who went out on missions. If it wasn't too threatening to Owen's "delicate condition", he went, otherwise, it was all the tea boy's job.

Tosh finally got a boyfriend and stopped joining him and Gwen in bed at night. He was disappointed to see her leave, but he was happy for her. She deserved to date someone who wasn't about to die or who wasn't an alien or who wasn't from another decade.

Gwen and Owen had many serious talks. He began to love Gwen as more than just his friend, but he was afraid to tell her. He didn't want her to feel stuck with a dead man who couldn't ever satisfy her the way a real man could, but she beat him to the punch one day when she told him she wanted to get married, did he think it would be possible? Owen thought that was a rather unconventional way of getting engaged, so he purchased her a ring and did it the right way. Between Tosh and Ianto they were able to hack into the Cardiff database and enter in that Gwen and Owen had applied for a marriage license and already had the blood work done.

It was a simple ceremony. The Torchwood team, Tosh's boyfriend, and Martha. They got married right there in the hub by Jack, since he was a captain, after all. Nothing really changed, other than the platinum bands on their fingers, and Gwen changed her last name to Harper. Owen knew he couldn't give her everything a "normal" man could, but he did the best he could. He even started reading those sex guides that talked about how to use a dildo to please your partner. She told him she was fine with things the way they were, but she appreciated his effort.

Owen started thinking about leaving a legacy. Okay, he started thinking about asking Gwen to have a baby with him. Of course, he didn't have any sperm or blood flow to do things the fun way, but he knew he had some sperm frozen away, ironically at the same sperm bank Carys worked at.

Nine months later, Gwen gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. They named her Hope. Hope Harper. When Hope was two, they would try the fertilization again, and this time they had a boy. A boy Gwen insisted on naming Owen Junior.

Hope and Junior were Owen's pride and joy. They never really asked questions about why their dad never ate dinner with them, or why he always was awake when they had a nightmare and would run into their parent's room. Owen was a good dad.

Jack and Martha's Doctor finally showed up, and the first thing he said when he met Owen was that Owen was "wrong". Everyone panicked. The Doctor wanted to take Owen away in his blue box to the future where people had more experience with bringing the dead back to life. Owen refused to go without Gwen and Jack along, so arrangements were made for Hope and Junior to stay with Tosh while they were away. Owen kissed his children and if he still had the ability to cry, he knew he'd have been crying. For all he knew, this was the last time he'd be seeing his children.

For once the Doctor actually did know what he was talking about, and the friend he took Owen to was able to completely reverse the dead process, making him whole again. The first thing he did was make love to his wife. He and Gwen had never had a proper honeymoon, so while the kids were safe with their Auntie Tosh, The Doctor dropped them off in Italy for two weeks of bliss. Baby number three arrived nine months later. A bouncing, baby girl they let the Doctor name. He named her Rose.

The first time he cut himself and bled, it was like a miracle. He actually didn't mind Martha having to stitch him up that time. It was like he had been given a second chance at life. Owen was a very happy man.


End file.
